WaPo is Distanced From Reality, Not Crap Reporting

There is no pile of vomit so large that it does justice to Carol Leonnig’s latest WaPo’s tribute to St. Judith of the High Chutzspa. If you listen carefully you can hear the plaintive strains of Threnody For the Victims of Patrick Fitzgerald lilting in the background:

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

Yeah, and her two best friends are a gal named Pudge and a Hefty bag full of pruno. Wait while I break out the world’s smallest violin. The article goes on to describe her “elite” visitors, a “who’s who of friends, supporters and Washington and New York luminaries”:

John R. Bolton, President Bush’s new ambassador to the United Nations, former “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw and former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.). Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the Inter-American Press Society and director of the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre has been by.

That’s it? That’s your “luminaries?” Wow, her struggle for First Amendment freedom really isn’t bringing out the big guns, is it? Some deranged streetcorner drunk with a sandwich board and a shower cap screaming about John 3:16 and fluoridated water could draw bigger names than that.

Elder statesman Tom Brokaw takes a breather from pushing that pile of Greatest Generation bullshit around on the national plate long enough to weigh in:

“Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case,” Brokaw said in an interview yesterday. “I really thought that was outrageous that she was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a strong but thoughtful way.”

Grandpa Brokaw is obviously sitting in the cheap seats, so let’s run it for him once again on the jumbo screen. According to ACLU board member Professor Geoffrey Stone:

In the Plame case, we have a relatively unusual circumstance where the source is essentially using the press in an effort to commit a federal crime…no version of a reporter-source privilege in my view or my judgment would cover the particulars of this situation.

We won’t waste any more time on Gramps ’til he’s had his nap and takes his Geritol.

Back to the realm of the patently absurd:

Miller did some reporting on Wilson’s claims that the government had twisted intelligence on Iraq’s attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war, but never wrote a story.

Wow, do you know that for a fact Carol? Because if you do, please give your sources. Enquiring minds, you know. So far NYT editor Bill Keller has steadfastly refused to say whether Miller was actually working on a story for the Times at all. Which has really raised the hackles of the entire Times staff, who at this point do not know why they must suffer professional humiliation of biblical proportions in defense of the cheap and shoddy rumor mongering Judith Miller passed off as journalism and have really never been told why.

All pretence of credibility flung to the four winds, we proceed apace:

Authorities at the Alexandria Detention Center say it is not unheard-of for some prisoners to receive a visit every day from a spouse or mother. What distinguishes Miller, detention officials concede privately, is the volume and celebrity of the people who have come to talk to her through the plexiglass partition of the tiny visitor center.

No, what distinguishes Miller is that her husband is out rubbing his face in the tits of some stripper (or on some Mediterranean cruise with JK Rowling bosomy dirty book writer Shirley Lord, I can never remember which) while she’s in the slammer eating canned corn and huffing spray paint with the ladies of Cell Block C.

Bolton’s visit raised some eyebrows in Washington.

No shit?

A vocal defender of administration claims in 2003 that Iraq was seeking weapons of mass destruction….

…i.e., one of the people who spoon fed Judy the lies she spread all over the front page of the NYT like a thick layer of dog shit…

….he could have had access to a State Department memo, parts of which were classified, that detailed Wilson’s trip to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking uranium there and identified his wife as a covert CIA operative…

…which means Bolton could in all likelihood be Miller’s “source” and the target of Fitzgerald’s investigation since he has never been questioned by the grand jury, and might have been there desperately trying to cover his ass. Come on, Carol, you useless tool. Say it. Indulge the obvious.

Bolton declined through a spokesman to discuss his visit to Miller or his reasons for going. “This has nothing to do with his job here,” the spokesman said. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

…as his lawyer was heard screaming wildly in the background, “for the love of God, John, shut up…”

Times officials have been mainstays on the visitor list, including chairman of the New York Times company Arthur Sulzberger Jr., columnist William Safire, Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson…

…hoping against hope that when Miller’s “journalistic principles” evaporate faster than a hot bottle of vodka she doesn’t take the other political operatives from the Times down with her.

Nice job, Carol. You managed to miss almost every single relevant point in a needlessly long story notable only for its humorous freedom from facts. No doubt Unka Karl has a nice, big fat something waiting for you.

Jane Hamsher

Jane is the founder of Firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect. She’s the author of the best selling book Killer Instinct and has produced such films Natural Born Killers and Permanent Midnight. She lives in Washington DC.Subscribe in a reader